13421070 – Page 7 – Film Audio Project – SEM A

ROLE DIARY – ‘George’ Early Planning and Liason

13421070 / October 26, 2015January 27, 2016 / Audio Production, Process Management, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

Our group agreed to work on the film ‘George’ roughly three weeks ago, and the main priority over this period has been to work with the film crew to solidify a shooting schedule which will enable us to properly cover the requirements for location sound for the project. This has been largely achieved by liason between myself and the director as single points of contact for managing our respective teams, and we now have the dates and our equipment and availability confirmed for shooting and location recording.

We also insisted that a rough schedule for post production be agreed, which has enabled me to plan and book facilities we will require for post well in advance.

Since we are required to score, compose and record the music for the piece as well as managing location recording and all post production in a relatively short timeframe, I am aware we should begin work on music and atmosphere prior to the beginning of filming as the schedule is tight. After receiving some basic guidance from the director on her requirements and an early draft of the script, we arranged several meetings with the crew to thrash out some more specific plans for the film’s audio.

The first part of this process was the discussion of the themes and motifs deriving from the story and script, and to what level these can or should be represented in the audio. In this case, the film addresses loss, sadness, institutionalisation and the rights and wrongs of judging others.

We were also informed that the director required ‘a lot of music’ which – practically speaking in the context of a short film, means ‘more music than not’ – and that this music should be rooted in a ‘classic’ score utilising acoustic instruments and tones, but should retain an unsettling, electronic edge. It is immediately apparent that this will constitute the largest and most challenging aspect of the project if we are to create the music to high standard, and that the 7 week timeframe for completing the entire project will mean we must begin the composition almost immediately, and before even basic rushes of the picture are available. This is unfortunate, and was specifically flagged as something which can cause problems by professional music supervisor Lol Hammond in a guest lecture to the AUP contingent this year, but is unavoidable if we’re to complete the job on time.

To this end, we requested further reference tracks and films from the director, and attempted to get to the heart of what works for her about these pieces. Since it is difficult to convey complex ideas in music and sound we worked to simplify these ideas and looked for ways to bridge the meaning the director intended to convey into music.

The information collected during this process allowed us to set about constructing a basic outline of our audio plan with reference to the script, roughly split into the areas of music – foley – atmosphere, whilst also taking the opportunity to document as many of the ‘physical’ (translating roughly to foley – atmos – dialogue) aspects of the script as possible, and arranged all this into several rough planning documents, with each group member concentrating in a particular area as dictated by their chosen role for this project. We checked a number of these ideas over with the director in conference as we worked.

This process of discussion and feedback enabled us to create rough outlines of the arcs of the audio components of the film which we fed back to the film-makers at our final panning meeting a week before shooting commences, which in turn will enable us to begin work on our contribution as early as possible.

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KEY POINTS –

How decisions pertaining to overall artistic direction were made, and why. – Contribution + Role

To manage the post-production workflow and contribute substantially to the sound design, construction and editing of the piece.

Process of liasing with client and discovering their requirements. – Process Management

To successfully manage the audio team’s interaction with film’s director, editor and producer on a practical and creative level, and ensure the audio team’s work is delivered on time and to a good standard.

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Guest Lecture – Bryan Rudd – Project Case Study – 19/10/15

13421070 / October 22, 2015October 26, 2015 / Guest Lecture

Bryan Rudd used this lecture to take us through his experience constructing a 5 part radio drama for BBC Radio 7 in 2007 to demonstrate a method by which we might present the details of our own project’s and the learning outcomes we achieve whilst carrying them out.

He reflected in detail on the problems he encountered stepping into the project at the 11th hour, the decisions he took to enable it’s completion and why they were taken, and how some of these translated into the positives or negatives of the piece as broadcast.

A key point, given the high pressure nature of the project he described, was deployment of effective project management and Bryan demonstrated how the constraints of the project and it’s brief effected the direction of research and decision-making, and how this was used in-turn to inform creative decisions such as recording locations, perspective choices and edit selection.

He also highlighted a couple of errors in the final product’s audio and explained his view of the judgement calls or pressures which led to them being missed in the final quality control process.

Given that my role of Supervising Editor in my group’s semester A project is similar in some respects to the multi-role Bryan adopted for this project – in that it entails key creative decisions, project management and research to fulfil both a brief and the artistic vision of the director and that project itself is relatively ambitious given it’s short time-frame – I would expect the case study he discussed to have more relevance than simply a demonstration of his reflection on the subject.

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Project Overview + Learning Outcomes

13421070 / October 22, 2015January 27, 2016 / Audio Production, Learning Outcomes, Project Overview

Semester A Audio Project AUP3003M group comprising:
Alice Asbury (Music Supervisor) – http://aliceaudioproject1.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk
Gareth Bailey (Supervising Sound Editor)
Rory Hunter (Location Audio Supervisor) – http://roryhunter.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Project Overview + Film Synopsis:

The Semester A project for the above group is to provide the audio for a 10 – 12 minute short drama created by a group of Media Production students, directed by Lucy Norton.

The following synopsis of the plot was provided by the client – “The film is about an old man (George) who struggles with everyday life tasks, encouraging the audience to sympathise with him. However, through the film there are suggestions that George has a dark and unsettling past that asks the audience to questions exactly how they actually feel about him. The film is based around the themes of judgement, punishment, forgiveness and loss.”

Client Requirements + Timeframe

We are engaged to provide a full score (preferably composed), location field recording of the audio and dialogue on set for roughly 8 days of filming, and full audio post production and editing of the audio, including additional foley and dialogue replacement as necessary.

Filming is due to commence October 26^th for a two week period and scheduled to conclude by Sunday 8^th of November, and the project audio must be completed and delivered in compliance with BBC audio guidelines by the 17th of December 2015.

We will receive an assembly cut of the film circa 4^th of December, and will deliver the finished soundtrack to picture by December 16^th leaving time for quality control, final paperwork and submission for all parties before the deadline. Prior to receipt of the assembly cut we will have provided a number of temp music tracks and work in progress for audio atmosphere, as many specific plot devices and scenes edited prior to the assembly cut’s delivery as is feasible which should enable us to deliver scratch mixes of the audio tracks for all or part of the film as required.

Group Aim

To create and deliver the soundtrack to the film ‘George’ by Lucy Norton, Charlotte Hughes, Shaun Standring and Angelin Selvanathan.

Group Objectives:

To create an effective musical score and soundtrack that suits the themes of the film and supports the story in a manner concordant with the picture and the preferences of the director.
To successfully manage and conduct location recording to capture useful dialogue and atmospheres that will form the basis for some sound design aspects of the picture.
To create believable and relevant atmospheres and sound effects in post production, and edit these into a full soundtrack using foley, location recordings, composed music and replaced dialogue where applicable.

Outcomes as the project’s Supervising Sound Editor:

To successfully manage the audio team’s interaction with film’s director, editor and producer on a practical and creative level, and ensure the audio team’s work is delivered on time and to a good standard.
To judge the initial direction of and maintain the consistency of the overall tone of the audio team’s work on the piece, and liase with the director to ensure this is concurrent with their vision of the piece.
To manage the post-production workflow and contribute extensively to the design, construction, editing and mixing of the audio for the piece.
To manage the delivery of the soundtrack at various stages of the production along with relevant paperwork, to the director and producer.

Other personal learning outcomes:

To expand my knowledge of the theory and audio techniques deployed in the films influencing ‘George’, and in drama as a genre more generally.
To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece.
To have a good degree of creative involvement in the conception and direction of the soundtrack for the piece.
To successfully manage a three person team in delivery of the entire soundtrack to a new piece of visual media efficiently.

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Guest Lecture – Lol Hammond, Music Supervisor – 05/10/15

13421070 / October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 / Audio Production, Guest Lecture

Lol Hammond is a music supervisor for film based in London and working for Vertigo Films, a production and distribution company responsible for award winning films such as Bronson and Monsters. He began life as a DJ and in events, before moving into film music in 2001.

Fundamentally, Lol’s job is to commission or select and gain rights for the use of suitable music for pictures and his lecture to the audio production 3rd year covered some of the practicalities of this work, the key relationships he considers most important, and some of the intricacies and problems associated with his position.

Broadly speaking he described three categories of audio with which he has involvement –

Source Music – Previously completed music tracks, often previously released elsewhere.

Composition – Music created specifically for the picture.

Sound Design – Audio work done in post.

Hammond describes his position as a filter or intermediary between various parties and the most important relationships as those he develops with a given film director, editor and composer and to some extent the Performers Rights Society with whom he interfaces regularly to clear source music.

Discussing this use of source music, Lol explained that a lot of his time is spent securing rights to use specific tracks from their publishers and record companies. The average price at the level he works is generally £3 – £4000 per ‘side’, with a side defined as a party requiring payment from the agreement. Generally speaking, the bigger the name of the artist the larger the required fee will be with examples of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles as particularly costly. Cost for licenses is often related to the overall budget of the film, and specific use of the music within the context of the picture also effects the cost to the user – with requests for use in trailers or credits correspondingly more expensive – and fees also differ for short and small budget films as opposed to major features, with the former being more negotiable.

However, Lol pointed out that buying licenses can become complicated when dealing with source music due to variation in rights holders across different territories and that, given the long tail nature of film distribution and income, it is always advisable to negotiate rights ‘in perpetuity’ rather than for a limited period of time. Artists with a higher profile also tend to exercise more control over where their music is used, though this can also be useful if a music supervisor has an existing relationship with the artist or their management directly. He also points out that a well known piece of music can easily shift the audience focus away from the film as a whole if used.

Returning to cost, Lol also suggested that offering rights to release the movies soundtrack can sometimes be used as leverage to reduce initial costs of licensing.

Moving on to music composed specifically for a picture, Hammond refers to himself as ‘hands on’ and as drawing on a varied pool of composers as opposed to sticking with a preferred composer which is sometimes the case with other film companies. He works to guide the composer based on the directors preferences, and stressed that writing music to the picture itself is critically important when composing. Finally, he touched on a complexity of using artists-as-composers in the context of higher profile acts, which can lead to issues when making edits after the fact or requesting stem audio. On the positive side, he pointed out that specifically composed works can also be leveraged for extra revenue via publishing for the production house, citing the soundtrack for Monsters as a specific example.

Practically speaking, Lol’s work usually begins with the receipt of an assembly cut which he then watches and makes preliminary decisions as to what broad ‘type’ of songs may fit the cues before offering up three or four choices for a potential sound to the director, which he refers to as ‘temp tracks’. These choices are then refined down to a specific track or track section. A danger here is that director can easily become accustomed to the temp track and it can become difficult to substitute this for better choices.

For me, the key practical points from this lecture were that a music supervisor should always work for the film, ignoring their personal preferences, and that diplomacy and relationship management are absolutely key skills in Lol’s business.

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